Charvarius Ward is ‘in play’ but Friday’s practice will be the determiner for Ward.
There are three injuries of note to monitor for the 49ers ahead of Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals. Linebacker Dre Greenlaw is not one of them.
Greenlaw, who has missed practiced this week with a hip injury, should be available. Defensive coordinator Steve Wilks said on Thursday that “we anticipate him playing this week” and in a follow-up question, confirmed that he was talking about Dre when asked if he believed Greenlaw would play on Sunday: “Yeah, I do. Yes.”
That still leaves three other high-end starters in Arik Armstead, Javon Hargrave, Charvarius Ward. General manager John Lynch joined KNBR Friday morning to provide an update on each. Here’s what Lynch said about Mooney:
“We’ll see. I think Mooney’s very much in play. I think he came out of the game early last week, but we had him out there, and Charvarius was comfortable to go back in if we needed him. Having said that, there was an injury, and so he’s worked really hard to rehab. He has not practiced yet this week, and I think today is going to be a big day to see where we can get him, and we still got time. So Charvarius is very much in play and haven’t figured that out yet, but he’s working hard to try to be out there on Sunday.”
When Ward was out last week, Isaiah Oliver returned to the nickel position, with Deommodore Lenoir playing on the outside along with Ambry Thomas.
Teams made it a concerted effort to attack Oliver when he was in the slot. You’d think Arizona would do the same with speedster Rondale Moore. Hollywood Brown has also lined up in the slot at least ten times in seven games this year, so he’s another threat inside. Brown has 30 targets this season between the numbers from 0–10 yards, by far the area of the field that he’s targeted the most.
The picture is a bit more cloudy pertaining to the defensive tackles. “Here’s Lynch on Hargrave: Haven’t figured that one out yet. But he injured his hamstring, and so I think it would be a reach for him to play this week, but we’ll see. He’s going to continue rehabbing.
Javon is a guy who’s been a healthy player throughout his career. He’s got the right type of mindset where he very much wants to play, but we got to be smart with that one. You don’t want those things to linger. So we’ll see where Javon goes.”
And as for Armstead: “Dealing with a couple of different things with his knee and his foot. Arik’s working extremely hard, as he always does, but we need Arik out there. When he’s out there, we need to keep him out there. So we’re working through that. And as for this week, I think somewhat in play, but I doubt that Arik makes it.”
We should be in for another heavy dosage of Javon Kinlaw, Kalia Davis, and Kevin Givens. Kinlaw and Givens have performed quite well in recent weeks, especially last week.
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